I like the pace of technology, both in finance and in health care, which I occasionally stray into. I have written for Securities Industry News, Risk, Institutional Investor and Alpha. For ten years I edited Windows in Financial Services, covering Microsoft technology in finance, and I continue to write for Banking Technology and Trading Places, both in London.

IBM's New Power Systems Challenge HP, Oracle and Dell For SMB Apps

As Dell and HP struggle to figure out their businesses, IBM is moving into their territory with Power Systems starting at $5,947 at the low end of its newly launched Power line of computers.

“With these new systems, IBM is forging an aggressive expanding of its Power and Storage Systems business into SMB and growth markets,” said Rod Atkins, senior vice president of IBM Systems and Technology Group. Growth markets is IBM-speak for developing countries. “Big data and cloud systems that were once only affordable to large enterprises are now available to the masses, he added.

These Power systems are completely IBM. The company said they can be be a better platform for big data and cloud than commodity x86 hardware because embedded memory and virtualization – key ingredients for analytics and cloud workloads – are built into the processor. These systems come optimized for IBM’s analytics software such as SPSS and Cognos even on the one- and two-socket boxes at the low end of the range. They will compete with Intel computers, only with more power, greater stability and manageability because the systems are integrated from design through production, said Colin Parris, general manager, IBM Power Systems.

“This is a big change for us,” Parris said of the move to offer products priced to compete with Intel-based systems. “These computers have 20 to 30 percent better performance, 8-10x better availability and 90 percent less security vulnerability than Intel-based machines.” For the first time, IBM will use two resellers, TechData and Ingram Micro, to distribute the entire line of Power systems to a wider range of small and medium size business customers.

Many SMBs have struggled to adopt big data and private cloud solutions due to lack of in-house skills and expertise to design and maintain commodity hardware-based systems, IBM said in its announcement. IBM is addressing these issues with new Power Systems that don’t require specialized skills and offer the latest advances in virtualization and automation to speed private and hybrid cloud creation.

California-based Westside Produce, a 700 person company, which contracts with melon growers to harvest and ship fresh melons throughout North America, turned to IBM’s Power System to make forecasting easier.

“Perishability of produce is a key challenge in our industry, and having the right technology in place to deliver fresh produce on time is critical for the success of our growers and our company,” said Justin Porter, director of technology at the company. “All of our mission critical systems run on IBM Power with little to no intervention required. I do spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with issues on less mission critical x86 problems.”

At the high end the Power systems come with 32 sockets, 256 cores and 4 threads per core, matching mainframes in their processing capacity.

“No one using Intel builds above 8 sockets,” Parris added.

IBM is aiming at companies that delayed a technical refresh during the years of the financial crisis and are now overdue. It expects to continue taking business from the competition.

The near-constant turmoil at HP for the last several years makes its installed base a target, said Parris, while Sun’s acquisition by Oracle also offers opportunity to persuade customers to switch platforms, while Dell’s decision to go private draws attention to the challenges it faces in the markets.

“Last year we did over $1 billion of competitive takeout,” Parris said. “Companies see we have a long roadmap while they ask if HP has the money to keep up. And now that we have reduced the price, people are asking why they should go with an x86 system. Quite a few Intel customers understand that although small workloads on Intel are fine, when you scale out you face problems. If you put 200 to 300 Intel boxes together, you better manage them closely If you have a security patch, you have to patch security across all 300 . With HP, Intel, and VMware, you have to figure it out all the way through.” Users are realizing that an Intel system with all the DIY it requires isn’t necessarily cheaper.

Power system computers with ample main memory as well as cache and excellent bandwidth between cores can support powerful in-memory databases like SAP’s Hana, Parris added.

IBM also introduced SmartCloud Storage Access which lets organizations set up private self-service storage clouds. The new software features a self-service portal that lets any user create an account, set up the amount of storage they need, and then start uploading files via the cloud with just a few clicks. New compression software offers 5x compression in real-time.

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